Posted on 11/06/2001 4:06:26 PM PST by Sunsong
"An Afghan university lecturer today told an Old Bailey jury how the horrors of the Taliban regime drove him to lead the armed hijacking of a plane and hold 170 passengers hostage at Stansted airport.
"Ali Safi, 38, described how he was forced to watch a woman being stoned to death as her eight-year-old daughter begged for mercy for the "crime" - in the eyes of the Taliban - of leaving the house without being accompanied by a man.
"He claimed the local authority arranged for lorry-loads of stones to be brought in and the leader of the Taliban's "department of prevention of crime and promotion of virtue" cast the first stone.
"The father-of-three said his own son had died from a simple respiratory problem because the young boy was taken ill when he was away and the Taliban, under their hardline moral code, would not permit his wife to leave home alone to take the child to hospital. Safi himself was arrested for playing chess and as a punishment was beaten so badly with cables and a metal bar that his back turned the colour of an aubergine, the court heard.
"On Fridays, he said, the local football stadium was turned into a punishment block where arms and legs were hacked off those who had offended the regime. He claimed the amputated limbs were hung from trees.
"When the Taliban took control of the country in 1996, Safi said he saw death squads roaming the streets shooting on sight. They broke into a hospital next to his home and indiscriminately shot nurses and patients. Bodies were ordered to be left lying in the streets as deterrents despite the 40 degree heat and the threat of disease.
"A few years earlier in Kabul he had seen the bullet-ridden body of President Najibullah, who had been overthrown by the Mujahideen, and his brother, hanging from a traffic pole in the middle of the street .
"Safi is one of 11 defendants, aged between 20 and 38, said to have seized the plane which was originally on an internal flight from Kabul in February last year. They were armed with four handguns and explosive grenades.
"They are accused of forcing it to fly across several former Soviet countries before eventually landing at Stansted where - in an operation costing £2 million - it was surrounded by armed police before the siege ended after 77 hours.
"Safi, from the northern city of Masar-i-Sharif, said women who had once enjoyed the normal freedoms of the West were liable to be arrested and either stoned to death or subjected to public lashings for any breach of the ruthless and extreme moral code enforced by the Taliban.
"In one of the worst experiences of my life I saw a woman stoned to death who I knew because she lived in our area," he told the jury through an interpreter.
"I saw a hole being dug and the judge decide that she had left her house without permission of her husband. They place her in the hole."
"He said that the head of the "prevention of crime and promotion of virtue" committee was the first person to throw a stone and that the people who had been ordered to watch were forced to stone the woman to death.
"Safi added: "They stoned her until the hole was full, then a doctor pronounced she was still alive so they kept on stoning her until she died. Her eight-year-old daughter was running around her begging people not to thrown stones at her mother."
"Safi and nine other defendants deny hijack. The 11th defendant, who does not face that charge, has pleaded not guilty to possessing explosives and arms. The case continues."
We should find out the name of that little girl who begged them not to stone her mother and place her name on a few of the bombs hitting these animals.......
NeverGore
That's a good idea.It's stories like these that help me focus on winning this war and liberating Afghanistan at the same time
I'm positive I saw that very same scene in Life of Brian from Monty Python.
Thank God for Free Republic
Where is this taking place?
Just trying to fill out the details .
The Taliban are simply evil!
To find all articles tagged or indexed using
taliban_list
Click here:
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.